Buddy Pokemon will appear alongside your Trainer avatar on your profile screen, and you'll earn candy for them just by walking around.

Since Pokemon GO launched earlier in the year, we have seen plenty of improvement and bug fix patches, but not really that many new features. Today, Niantic revealed on its official website that an upcoming patch will add a "Buddy Pokemon" system to the game.

"You will be able to pick your favorite Pokemon to become your buddy," wrote Niantic. "Having a Buddy Pokemon opens up unique in-game rewards and experiences." Your Buddy Pokemon will appear alongside your Trainer avatar on your profile screen, and you will be able to earn that specific Pokemon's candy simply by walking. It's a great way to get candy for those hard-to-find Pokemon, or simply a Pokemon that you really want to evolve.

You're not locked into a Buddy Pokemon in any sort of way - you can switch out your buddy at any time you want.

Niantic didn't offer any kind of release window for this update, but told us that it has a lot more "in the works" for Fall, and to stay tuned.

Cowabungaa:Great. All we need now is for the app to track steps when the screen is off and I might actually play this again.

This game is already bad enough in consuming data for people with limited data plans.

That's one's own responsibility, if you ask me. The thing is that right now you have to constantly keep your phone open if you want to hatch any eggs. And for a 10 km hike that's ridiculous. The stupidest thing is that the game does track the timers on lucky eggs and incense when it's closed.

Cowabungaa:Great. All we need now is for the app to track steps when the screen is off and I might actually play this again.

This game is already bad enough in consuming data for people with limited data plans.

That's one's own responsibility, if you ask me. The thing is that right now you have to constantly keep your phone open if you want to hatch any eggs. And for a 10 km hike that's ridiculous. The stupidest thing is that the game does track the timers on lucky eggs and incense when it's closed.

I program mobile games for a living; the reason it does this is likely not that it's actively tracking the lucky egg, but the egg just stores a serverside timestamp on the real world time it expires. When you load the game it just re-calcs the current time to the end timestamp.

Why wasn't this a thing at launch? It seems like something they should have had for people at the beginning. To allow you to keep your starter relevant. As it stands, your starter is pretty worthless in the long run.

Also, as others have said, being able to hatch eggs without having to have the app open would be nice.

It's one's responsibility to use data responsibly on the game, but the vast majority of us can't afford unlimited data plans. So it's pretty inconsiderate to say that Niantic should alienate a large portion of their playerbase just because you want a particular feature.

Saying that, there's absolutely no reason as to why a pedometer would consume data. Considering it can be done via the phone's motion sensor, rather than actually tracking distance. There's also no reason as to why a pedometer function wouldn't work while the game was running in the background.